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CapitalPress.com
August 25, 2017
Washington
Final adjudication of Yakima water rights upcoming
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
YAKIMA, Wash. — Ya-
kima River Basin water right
holders have until Nov. 15 to
review and object to a pro-
posed final court adjudication
of their water rights involved
in a 40-year-old lawsuit.
Under the threat of drought
in 1977, the state Department
of Ecology petitioned for an
adjudication to determine the
legality of all claims for the
use of surface water in the
Yakima River Basin. The re-
sulting court case, Ecology v.
James Acquavella and others,
began a thorough and binding
review of all historical facts
and evidence associated with
each claim for rights to sur-
face water use in the basin,
including Yakima, Kittitas,
Benton and parts of Klickitat
counties.
Approximately
3,000
claims were researched by
Capital Press File
The Yakima River flows through Yakima Canyon between Ellens-
burg and Selah, Wash. In 1977, the state Department of Ecology
petitioned for an adjudication to determine the legality of all claims
for the use of surface water in the Yakima River Basin.
posed final decree including
a draft schedule of rights de-
tailing each of approximately
2,300 water rights confirmed
in a conditional final order
years ago and reflecting how
tributary by Ecology and re-
viewed by the court and par-
ties.
On Aug. 10, Yakima
County Superior Court Judge
F. James Gavin entered a pro-
they have changed since then.
Water right holders may
find the schedule online at
www.ecy.wa.gov and find
their water right by name,
court claim number or certif-
icate number. Copies of the
draft schedule of rights are
also available at the Yakima
County Clerk’s Office and at
Ecology’s regional office in
Union Gap.
An open house is set for 5
to 7 p.m. Sept. 6 at Ecology’s
regional office, 1250 W. Alder
St., Union Gap, for people to
ask questions and learn more
about the process.
The 2,300 conditionally
confirmed water right hold-
ers include many municipal-
ities and irrigation districts
representing tens of thou-
sands of people, said Joye
Redfield-Wilder, an Ecology
spokeswoman.
She said she doesn’t know
if the approximate 700 claims
not confirmed were denied
and that some of them may
have merged. Conditional
confirmations began in 1989,
she said.
The draft schedule of
rights identifies the quanti-
ty of water in acre-feet and
the rate of diversion in cubic
feet per second to which each
water right holder is entitled.
The right establishes purpose
of use, time of year, point of
diversion and gives a legal
description of the right’s au-
thorized place of use. Priority
dates determine who gets wa-
ter in drought years.
Washington law recog-
nizes “prior appropriation,”
also known as “first in time
— first in right.” Tribes have
ancestral rights that protect
flows for fish. Settlers who
filed claims showing they
were putting an amount of
water to beneficial use on or
before May 10, 1905, were
granted senior water rights.
Rights awarded after that date
are junior and subject to first
restrictions in drought years.
“Now water users have
clarity about their water rights
and stability on what they can
expect going forward,” said
Polly Zehm, Ecology deputy
director.
The litigation brought peo-
ple together to settle claims
and laid the foundation for
the Yakima Integrated Water
Management Plan to address
water needs in a collaborative
approach, she said.
After Nov. 15, all objec-
tions and responses will be
posted on Ecology’s adjudi-
cation web page. People will
have until Feb. 13 to respond
to those objections and re-
sponses and must mail any
responses to the holder of the
water right they are objecting
to. Any party may reply to
those responses by April 14.
After that the court will enter
a final decree establishing wa-
ter rights.
Environmentalists sue over water
WSDA fines irrigation district manager
By DON JENKINS
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Two environmental groups
are suing Cargill Inc., alleging
it is violating the Clean Wa-
ter Act by releasing polluted
stormwater from its animal
feed plant in Ferndale, Wash.
Seattle-based
Puget
Soundkeeper Alliance and
Bellingham-based Re Sources
12 month waiver
according to the suit. The
allegations are based on wa-
ter-quality tests submitted by
the company to the state De-
partment of Ecology.
A Cargill spokesman said
in an email that the company
has worked for several years
with the Department of Ecol-
ogy and the city of Ferndale
to comply with regulations.
for Sustainable Communities
filed the lawsuit Aug. 7 in
U.S. district court.
The groups claim Ferndale
Grain released stormwater
that’s too cloudy and has too
much zinc and copper af-
ter heavy rains. The water is
discharged into a ditch that
flows into larger waterways
and eventually Puget Sound,
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COMBINES
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press File
Bill Schillinger, director of the
Washington State University
dryland research station in
Lind, Wash., says winter peas
are economically comparable to
winter wheat in crop rotations.
use as much water, he said. In
Ritzville, spring wheat yields
averaged 34 bushels per acre
after winter peas and 31 bush-
els per acre after winter wheat
over seven years.
Potential winter pea mar-
kets include food aid, cover
crops and pet food, Schil-
linger said. Farmers receive
10 to 20 cents per pound.
Schillinger’s research team
used the edible pea variety
Windham, which, he said, is
not the best fit for the market.
Newer varieties have better
qualities.
Winter pea production
has increased each year, and
Schillinger foresees demand
taking off. The state has
20,000 winter pea acres, but
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A researcher and a farmer
agree that winter peas use less
water than other crops, add
nitrogen to the soil and help
combat grassy weeds in a crop
rotation with wheat.
Farmers and research-
ers have been looking for
an alternative crop to winter
wheat for a long time, said
Bill Schillinger, director at the
Washington State University
research station in Lind.
He recently published a
paper on the potential of win-
ter peas for dryland farmers in
the journal “Frontiers in Ecol-
ogy and Evolution.”
Schillinger compared a
winter pea-spring wheat-sum-
mer fallow rotation to a winter
wheat-spring wheat-summer
fallow rotation. He put on 50
pounds of nitrogen fertilizer
an acre for winter wheat, but
none for winter peas.
In Ritzville, pea yields av-
eraged 2,200 pounds per acre
over seven years, compared to
73 bushels per acre for winter
wheat.
Spring wheat that follows
winter peas has higher yields
because winter peas introduce
nitrogen into the soil and don’t
he believes it could double —
and then double again.
Ritzville farmer Ron Jira-
va worked with Schillinger,
raising 20 acres of winter peas
last year and increasing to 50
acres this year. He plans to
grow 300 acres next year.
Winter peas helped Jirava
control goatgrass.
Jirava expects more grow-
er acceptance for winter peas.
“If they don’t, I’m going
to be kind of flabbergasted,
because they’re so easy,” he
said. “I can plant my peas, it
could rain an inch and a half
on them and they’re going to
come up.”
Jirava recommends farm-
ers know the ground’s chem-
ical history. Some herbicide
residuals hurt winter peas, he
said.
Jirava said winter peas
cost a little more for seed than
wheat, but don’t require fertil-
izer and even leave some left
over in the soil.
“The yield we’ve seen has
made me comfortable enough
to (say), ‘This is a good tool
for goatgrass and cheatgrass
control,’” he said. “We’ve
got all these different ‘tools
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catchphrase. We might as well
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damage initially estimated at
$220,000 to $300,000.
Kern said Monday he
has yet to reach a settlement
with the district’s insurance
company. The spraying also
harmed the block’s 2017
crop, he said.
“It definitely reduced this
year’s crop well over 50 per-
cent,” Kern said.
Researcher expects continued
growth in use of winter peas
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The Washington State
Department of Agriculture
has fined a former Cascade
Irrigation District manager
$450 for an errant herbicide
application that damaged
a pear orchard in Central
Washington.
The penalty against Rich-
ard Lee, finalized Aug. 14,
was the third fine issued by
WSDA related to the April
1, 2016, spraying of weeds
along a canal maintenance
road southeast of Ellensburg.
The herbicide settled on
dust and then blew into a 22-
acre pear orchard owned by
the district’s board vice pres-
ident, Ben Kern, and caused
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Capital Press
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